Gustave Courbet
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- :For the French Admiral, see Admiral Courbet (1828-1885)
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (June 10, 1819 – December 31, 1877) was a French painter.
Realism
Best known as an innovator in Realism (and credited with coining the term), and a landscape and seascape painter, his scenes are not Romantic or idealized as was customary style at the time. Rather, he portrayed dynamic scenery, subject to continuous and progressive change. Courbet believed the Realist artist's mission was the pursuit of truth which would help erase social contradictions and imbalances.
For Courbet realism was not the perfection of line and form, but spontaneous and rough handling of paint, suggesting direct observation by the artist and portraying the irregularities in nature. He depicted the harshness in life, and in so doing, challenged contemporary academic ideas of art, which brought him criticism that he deliberately adopted a cult of ugliness.
His work, along with the works of Honoré Daumier and Jean-François Millet, became known as Realism.
Born in Ornans (Doubs), into a prosperous farming family which wanted him to study law, he went to Paris in 1839, and worked at the studio of Steuben and Hesse. An independent spirit, he soon left, preferring to develop his own style by studying Spanish, Flemish and French painters and painting copies of their work.
His first works, an Odalisque, suggested by Victor Hugo, and a Lélia, illustrating George Sand, were literary subjects; but these he soon abandoned for the study of real life.
A trip to the Netherlands in 1847 strengthened Courbet's feeling that painters should portray the life around them, as Rembrandt, Hals, and the other Dutch masters had done.
Among other works, he painted his own portrait with his dog, and [The Man with a Pipe], both of which the Paris Salon jury rejected. However, the younger critics, the Neo-romantics and Realists, loudly sang praises of Courbet, who by 1849 was becoming well known, producing such pictures as After Dinner at Ornans (for which the Salon awarded him a medal) and The Valley of the Loire.
Burial at Ornans
Probably Courbet's most famous work is Burial at Ornans. Courbet's painting based around what he saw at the funeral of his grand uncle became the first masterpiece in the Realist style. In September 1848 he attended the funeral of his great uncle at Ornans and later painted the huge canvas, Burial at Ornans. He used people who had been to the funeral as models for the painting, which was another way that the style was new. Previously, models were used as actors, to portray the life of other people from other times, yet here Courbet was painting the very people who had been to the event. It gives a realistic look at the townspeople of Ornans, and the people Courbet knew. They are shown in a realistic setting, giving a look into what it was like to live in Ornans. The painting caused a fuss with critics and the public. It is an enormous work, measuring 10 by 22 feet, and depicts a funeral in a town in the way in which painters might have painted a picture of a royal funeral. It was unusual to take an ordinary event and give it as much importance and dignity as would be usual to depict royalty. By creating such interest in this way of painting an ordinary scene, the public grew much more interested in this new, Realist style of work. The lavish, decadent fantasy of Romanticism lost popularity, people desiring something more real and closer to home. Courbet regarded this work as not just a funeral for his uncle, but in actual fact a funeral for Romanticism as a style. As Courbet said, "the Burial at Ornans was in reality the burial of Romanticism."
The Salon of 1850 found him triumphant with the Burial at Ornans, the Stone-Breakers (destroyed in 1945) and the Peasants of Flazey. His style continued to develop uniqueness, as in Village Damsels (1852), the Wrestlers, Bathers, and A Girl Spinning (1852).
Because he associated his ideas of realism in art with Socialism, when he had gained an audience he promoted democratic and Socialist ideas by writing politically motivated essays and dissertations.
To a friend in 1850 he wrote,
He displayed his monumental The Artist's Studio at the Salon des Refusés in 1855.
Notoriety
Towards the end of the 1860s, Courbet painted a series of increasingly erotic works, culminating in The Origin of the World (L'Origine du monde) (1866), depicting female genitalia, and [The Sleepers] (1866), featuring two women in bed. While banned from public display, the works only served to increase his notoriety.
On April 14, 1870, Courbet established a "Federation of Artists" (Fédération des artistes) for the free and uncensored expansion of art. The group's members included André Gill, Honoré Daumier, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Eugène Pottier, Jules Dalou, and Manet.
His refusal of the cross of the Legion of Honour offered to him by Napoleon III made him immensely popular with those who opposed the current regime, and in 1871 under the revolutionary Paris Commune he was placed in charge of all the Paris art museums and saved them from looting mobs. Because of his insistance to execute the Communal decree for the destruction of the Vendôme Column he was designated as being responsible and accordingly sentenced by a Versaille courtmartial to six months in prison and a fine of 500 francs.(September 2,1871). In 1873 however the newly elected president Mac-Mahon wanted to resurrect the Column and Courbet was singled out to pay the expenses. He then took refuge in Switzerland to avoid bankruptcy. On May 4, 1877 the estimate of the costs was finallly established: 323.091 fr 68 cent. Courbet was allowed to pay in yearly instalments of 10.000 francs for the next 33 years, untill his 91st birthday.
Courbet died, age 58, at La Tour du Peilz, Switzerland, of a liver disease aggravated by heavy drinking on December 31, 1877 -a day before the payment of the first instalment.(Bernard Noël, 1978)
An exhibition of his works was held in 1882 at the École des Beaux-Arts.
Sources
- Champfleury, Les Grandes Figures d’hier et d’aujourd’hui (Paris, 1861)
- Mantz, "G. Courbet," Gaz. des beaux-arts (Paris, 1878)
- Zola, Mes Haines (Paris, 1879)
- C Lemonnier, Les Peintres de la Vie (Paris, 1888).
- Bernard Noël, "Dictionnaire de la Commune" Paris: Champs Flammarion, 1978
References
External links
- [Courbet images and biography at CGFA]
- [Artchive on Courbet]
- [Humanities Web on Courbet]
- [Art Renewal Center; biography and images]
- [Courbet’s 'Low Tide at Trouville' (c.1865)] in the [Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool]
- [E-zine article on Gustave Courbet]
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